Analytical firm Canalys has released its latest report on the Chinese smartphone market for the first quarter of 2024 and Apple has the worst results among the top 5 brands vying for dominance in a large market share. most in Asia.
Huawei returned to the top position after 13 quarters with 17% market share. This domestic company shipped 11,7 million smartphones thanks to the famous Mate and Nova series, while OPPO rose to second place thanks to the strong performance of the Reno 11 series, shipping 10,9 million units. In contrast, HONOR, vivo and Apple all decreased sales during the quarter, ranking third, fourth and fifth, respectively.
The hottest phone right now in China: Huawei Pura 70. (Photo: SCMP)
HONOR shipped 10,6 million units with a market share of 16%, up 9% year-on-year, while vivo shipped 10,3 million units with a market share of 15%, down 9% year-on-year . Apple dropped the most in the top 5, falling to 5th place from first place, with 10 million units and a market share of 15%, down 25% over the same period last year.
Huawei's sales have increased 70% compared to a year ago, when the company was still reorganizing its phone business after US sanctions. Huawei's 5G Mate 60 Pro uses a Chinese-made 7-nanometer processor designed specifically for the domestic market, demonstrating the kind of advanced semiconductor manufacturing capabilities that US sanctions designed plan to prevent.
Huawei has since released its new Pura line of flagship smartphones and is busy developing its own operating system, HarmonyOS, as it cannot use Google's Android and Google Mobile Services. The continued expansion of the HarmonyOS ecosystem has broken the two-horse race between Android and iOS in mainland China.
However, the Chinese "big four" ranked above Apple this quarter still cannot be happy yet. Below is a chart of smartphone market share over the past 3 years in China.
Market share chart of top 6 smartphone brands in China from the third quarter of 3 to present.
If we only look at the past 2 quarters, it is easy to see that while Huawei and OPPO are rising strongly, Apple is "slumping", almost falling out of the top 5 and is only slightly ahead of Xiaomi. An obvious trend has been repeated over the past few years: Apple always "explodes" in the fourth quarter of every year, then gradually loses its position for the rest of the following year.
This is directly related to Apple's product and sales strategy, as their flagship product, the main iPhone line (excluding iPhone SE), is always launched and on sale in September-October every year. Every time a new iPhone is released, the product effect is very good in the billion-people market, far surpassing the remaining competitors. Every time Apple wins the "top", no other company can compete.
Meanwhile, the product strategies of Chinese domestic firms allow them to maintain a stable market share throughout the year. In contrast to the "sinusoidal" amplitude of Apple, HONOR or OPPO, Xiaomi all have quite "quiet" charts. Perhaps Tim Cook and Apple leaders could still shake their legs, if it weren't for a "dark horse" that was about to gallop: Huawei.
The competition between Apple and Huawei will probably take more time to answer, but at this point, the Apple family's problem is clearer than ever: Attracting new people to its product ecosystem - and get existing users to upgrade sooner.
It's no surprise that the pace of iPhone upgrades has slowed in recent years. There are many reasons for that: rising phone prices, economic uncertainty, and the fact that the world is still trying to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. Best of all, Apple is giving consumers fewer reasons to upgrade.
Let's face it: Apple's flagship product hasn't changed much since the iPhone 12 was released in 2020. And before that, there haven't been any major upgrades since 2017. Meanwhile , users in the low to mid segment always have countless attractive options. The question is, is Apple ready to revolutionize its product line and focus on lower-end phones to gain market share?
